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South of the border, war is raging with guns mostly supplied by merchants in the United States. Mexico has estimated that almost 50,000 people have been killed since 2006, a toll that has made its top officials irate about the persistent flow of weapons south.... Read more»

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The figures regarding Mexico are bogus - and have been debunked by outlets as diverse as factcheck.org, Fox News, CBS News and Sen. Grassley. Here are the details:

1) The figures only reflect the guns Mexico submits for tracing. This is consistently less then 1/3 of the total guns seized by Mexican authorities. Mexico does not submit the other 2/3 + because they obviously are not “US sourced”. (The biggest indication is the lack of a serial number - all guns made or sold in the US must have one.) We are now at 30% - a far cry from 70-90%.

2) Next, ATF counts guns sold directly to Mexican and other foreign governments as “US sourced”. These guns were never at any time part of the US retail market. Where do they come from? Many come from direct sales to the Mexican government. Defecting soldiers and police take their weapons with them. CBS News reports that 1/3 of guns sold to the Mexican government are diverted to the cartels before they are even issued. Diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks confirm that huge numbers of firearms are coming from the Central American black market. These are left over weapons from the wars in the 1980s. These include large numbers of US made military grade weapons - that can be bought very cheaply and in bulk. This explains why the average age of “US sourced” firearms is 14 years. In spite of all this evidence, ATF and most press outlets make the case that ALL of these weapons come from the US retail market and NONE come from the black market.

Fast and Furious proves just how hard - and expensive - it is to buy large numbers of guns in the US and smuggle them to Mexico. The only reason the straw buyers were not prevented from buying these guns by the licensed gun dealers is that ATF ORDERED THEM TO SELL THE GUNS! Dealers refuse sales and report straw buyers all the time. As one ATF agent said, “Licensed dealers make our cases for us”.

Why in the world would a cartel pay 5-10 times more for guns they have to convert to fully automatic, when they can buy in bulk for less money?

What is the real figure for guns from the US market? ATF could provide this figure, but they have not done so. The best estimates from the available data is 8-12% of guns recovered by Mexican authorities - a far cry from 70-90%!

Guns from all over find their way into the black market - in addition to used guns, China, Iran and North Korea all sell large numbers of guns - many of which have been recovered in Mexico. The truth is if we eliminated every gun that traced back to the US retail market, other sources would quickly fill the void and the effect would be zero.

For more details, see: http://reasonedpolitics.blogspot.com/2011/04/hillary-eric-wikileaks-and-batfe.html

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